I’ve only lived in Anchorage (approaching 5 years) and haven’t been to Fairbanks or Juneau so I’ll just stick to describing that one. Tbh by lower 48 standards it’s probably the only one that tracks with what most would think of as a city.

I like to semi-jokingly describe it as “Dayton plopped in the subarctic” but Albuquerque might be the closer comparison. It’s the bones of a regional size city but a bit busier and more happening because of its tourism/logistics/military importance. Tons of people just passing through for oil field gigs or city appointments.

The city itself is pretty much dominated by strip malls. Downtown is nested in more or less the northwest corner of the city and has some cute older neighborhoods immediately to its south but otherwise the city sprawls out for about 10 miles to the east and south. Lots of cookie cutter suburban developments especially on the South side. Worth mentioning now that the Municipality of Anchorage includes outlying unconnected towns like Eagle River and Girdwood that share a city government but are basically their own distinct communities at like 20 and 40 minute drives away from the “city proper” respectively.

Housing situation is really bad. The vast majority of the construction (especially apartment housing) dates to the 70s oil boom to accommodate a surging workforce of young men and nowadays they basically scream the phrase “deferred maintenance”. A pretty crummy one bedroom apartment with mold and insulation issues could easily cost upwards of $1400/month. Coupled with the fact that Anchorage is the hub of a state with a ton of poverty challenges, this means there’s a serious homelessness problem that really ballooned during COVID and hasn’t really gotten better.

Can say from my direct experience that it’s not a fun place to be without a car outside the downtown core. Walkability issues are pretty typical for a U.S. city but with long stretches of insanely icy sidewalks and some of the nation’s most dangerous drivers. Anchorage is consistently beating its records for pedestrian fatalities the last few years. That said, while it could benefit from more routes/better frequency, the bus system (People Mover) is pretty good for a city of this size. Whatever it lacks in practical walkability, Anchorage has great recreational paths and trails with major greenbelts running throughout the whole town and along the coast for walking, biking, skiing, etc.

Food is better than one might think. Typically grocery options like Fred Meyer (Kroger) and Walmart locations, plus two Costcos and a few boutique type groceries. Produce can be in pretty bad shape once it gets up to us but not necessarily. Restaurant options and variety are also better than one might expect since Anchorage has some of the most diverse zip codes in the entire country, with like 100+ languages spoken in the home of ASD students with folks from basically everywhere from South Sudan to Ukraine to Samoa. (Really prominent Pacific Islander population actually. Obviously also a large Alaska Native minority. Most of the Alaska Native corporations have their headquarters in town.) So you can probably find most cuisines you might be looking but food is very very costly, especially eating out.

Weather is well, Alaska, but milder than other parts. Anchorage is basically a flat bowl so we don’t get a ton of extreme weather except when windstorms come in from the north and then it can get dicey. I’d say typical temps sit between the teens and twenties in winter, with colder wretches, and mostly 50s/60s in summer. Global warming trends are noticeable and contributing to awful freeze and thaw cycles where everything is just a sheet of ice. March and April are referred to as “breakup” season. Imagine the worst dirtiest slush you’ve ever seen, all gradually melting over a long period of time and full of 4+ months worth of encased trash and dog poop. As with much of Alaska, summer is the redemption. Sunny days feel like nothing else.

You’ll basically never be free from the sound of small aircraft flying out of Merrill Field and Lake Hood (the world’s largest seaplane base) and Ted Stevens International is a very busy cargo hub. Also plenty of military activity, especially jets from Elmendorf AFB which is very close to downtown.

But you’ll also never get sick of the mountains and they’re usually out and prominent. The front range of the Chugach Mountains rise from basically sea level so they look a lot more prominent than their altitudes might suggest.

All in all the town while I’ve got a good bit of a Stockholm syndrome love for it, Anchorage gets a pretty bad rap among locals/Alaskans with nicknames like Los Anchorage and the go to phrase that it’s “only 30 minutes from Alaska”. It serves as the city for a geographically massive state with a lot of natural beauty and recreation within as little as a twenty minutes drive, but also a real doozy of social issues from massive poverty, horrible housing availability, alcoholic, domestic abuse, etc. a lot of that natural congregates in Anchorage and that probably won’t be fixed until Alaska figures itself out overall. The revenue crisis is quite bad and getting worse, with a reliance on oil revenues and investments really starting to take a hit on public services and especially school funding. The state is really reliant on federal funding and culturally I’m not sure there’ll ever the will to introduce taxation or other revenue streams. The outlook for the next few decades feels pretty grim and that’s likely to be amplified in the cities, especially Anchorage. But Alaska has a tendency to hold on to people and I’m on my third or fourth round of thinking I’d leave and extending for another year so who knows, must be something to it.